This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention that is recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
There are over 200,000 Teletype devices (TTYs) in use in the US. TTYs are used by distinct groups of people. The first are those whose severe hearing impairment began at birth or in early childhood, before they acquired language. Many of these people refer to themselves as Deaf (with a capital letter) to indicate that they are members of a different culture, especially focusing on their use of American Sign Language. A second group consists of those people whose hearing loss is less severe, or who acquired their hearing impairment after they acquired language. They may use a TTY in concert with speech where possible. A third group includes those who do not have a hearing loss, but who, due to another disabling condition such as cerebral palsy, are not able to speak intelligibly. Some individuals in this latter group are also motor and mobility impaired.
These small TTY devices often have single line displays and keyboards. Baudot, an older telecommunications protocol often used in TTY devices, employs five bit frequency shift keying (FSK) and a mode character to shift from letters to numbers. It also uses half duplex where users alternate turns, with no simultaneous typing. A conventional “GA” (for “Go ahead”) is typed to indicate that one's message is complete.
VMSs, as well as other commonly called services, often use multiple-choice selection trees. In the domain of telephony for service calls, multiple-choice selection trees have become common place. These trees may be navigated by touchpad or by voice, and they have benefited enterprises by allowing them to automate information gathering and the funneling of service calls. Unfortunately, users are often frustrated in a number of ways: They may not clearly hear or remember a full set of choices, and are thus, forcing them to listen to the entire set again; While one of the choices may be the one they are need, they may have a different key word in mind, necessitating listening to the list again to look for a variant term; They may mistype their choice or the system may not clearly hear their verbal response; They may be several layers deep into the tree before a problem becomes clear, necessitating going back several levels to remedy the problem; and/or Other users may not be able to use the service at all due to a disability or available equipment.
Existing telephony systems may also pose usability problems when users have to interact with a system using speech or tone interface. IVR systems may be based on a selection from menu, which has to be read to the user item by item (for example: “if you would like to talk to customer support press or say “1”, if you would like to talk to services press or say “2”, if you know the extension you are calling press or say “3”, etc.). The fundamental difficulty of such interaction relates to the fact that many computer-based systems are menu-type choice oriented, but the user has only their voice and a dial up keyboard to interact with the system.
FIG. 1 shows a present arrangement for a client 110 to access a phone target integrated voice response (IVR) server 150 via the public switched telephone network (PSTN) 130.
Existing telephony systems often pose usability problems when users have to interact with the IVR system 150 using a speech or tone interface. This problem is aggravated when the user has a disability that interferes with using the system. Integrated voice response (IVR) systems often are based on a selection from a menu, which must be read to the user item by item. Existing solutions to this problem include teletype (TTY) access to public voice mail and audiotext/IVR systems directed to users with special needs and support for voice to voice interaction.
Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) is an operator-assisted service between TTYs and voice telephones, mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act. In many TRS calls, a deaf or hard of hearing person (typically using a TTY) dials a toll-free number and requests that a call be made to a hearing person (voice party). The TRS operator (e.g., a “communication assistant” or “CA”) places the outbound call on a second line. The conversation between the TTY user and the voice party takes place with the assistance of the operator, who speaks the typed messages for the benefit of the voice party, and who types the spoken messages for the benefit of the TTY user.
There are two variants from the standard TRS call. In one variation, voice carryover (VCO), the TTY user communicates by speaking, but reads the reply from the CA on the display. This service is useful for those people who cannot hear phone conversation, but can speak and prefer to do so, and those who cannot type well. In another variation, called hearing carryover (HCO), the TTY user types a message (which is read off by the CA), but hears the spoken reply. This is useful for people who can hear and type but are speech impaired.
Currently, some TRS providers allow TTY users to access voice mail via a TRS call. However, this can be unsatisfactory to both the TTY user and the TRS provider. As with integrated voice response (IVR) systems, the rate of speech is often faster than the CA's typing speed. In this case, messages must be replayed to be fully transcribed, and the CA does not always have the ability to replay the message. This may result in loss of messages, loss of content, or multiple calls into the voice mail system (VMS) platform.
Many TTY users live in households with non-TTY users. This issue is one element of both the administrative and caller interfaces. There are five sub-issues:
a. TTY-only households with single mailboxes have no additional problems with the interface. They can use an integrated message. These households are most likely to operate TTYs without a voice telephone in parallel.
b. TTY-only households with multiple mailboxes need a method of prompting both their voice and TTY callers what to enter in order to put their message in the right mailbox. Callers reach a household menu, and must enter a DTMF digit to enter an individual mailbox. Currently this can be achieved through use of an integrated message. These households would have to create integrated messages for each mailbox, plus one for the household menu.
c. Mixed households with single mailboxes require a single integrated message.
d. Mixed households with multiple mailboxes have the same problem as b.
e. Households with distinctive ringing have an additional problem regarding its interoperation with voice mail. Not all switches forward the called number to the voice mail platform. Therefore the VMS is only aware of the called line's physical line number, and cannot provide a customized outgoing message. Also, the forwarding feature cannot be turned on and off on a per-number basis. This affects TTY users who may prefer to use their TTYs as answering machines: they must set their TTY ring count lower than the line's ring count in order to do so. There is currently no solution for this problem.
TTY users may also prefer to use their TTY keyboard for input, rather than DTMF from a telephone keypad. This is due to the fact that many TTY users do not keep a voice telephone in parallel with their TTY, and thus have no access to a DTMF keypad. Their request is to be able to drive the VMS menus from the TTY keyboard, using Baudot characters. Another solution is for more TTY manufacturers to add DTMF capabilities into their products. Many already have this feature for dialing the call in the first place, but cannot send DTMF once the call is placed.
TTY users report that they can place and receive TTY messages on some private voice mail systems (VMSs) without difficulty and on some systems with only occasional loss of characters but other systems are not accessible. Due to the non-error-correcting nature of the Baudot protocol, if a significant number of characters are lost in playback, the customer may be required to re-play the message in order to capture its meaning. If the errors enter during recording, there may not be a solution.
A few TTY-users currently use public voice mail systems without any TTY access features. For everyday use, they have learned to pace the menus by both counting and watching their line status indicators. Their problem is not with message storage and retrieval but with the user interface. System messages and prompts (e.g., how many new messages, message disposition, etc.) as well as the administrative interface (recording a new outgoing message, notification options, etc.) may be available only in spoken form.
Problems remain when customers receive a generic voice-only prompt. Thus there is a need to supply additional browsing options for an integrated voice response server.